47 comments:

Well, maybe they just didn't actually touch the button, but it seemed awfully convenient. I like Sarah Palin, but I don't think she's a viable candidate because she has too much msm and snl snarkiness to overcome.

I've had a few flings with being the object of media attention during my life.

The people in the media, for some reason, think that you owe them. Why? I have no idea.

You can see this phenomenon on this board, too. 200 comment long postings about what Palin owes the commenters. She owes them explanations. She should be concerned about what they think. She should tell them her plans.

Palin doesn't owe anybody anything. She owes her family and herself. When she contracts for a gig, she owes the people who pay her.

You can see how angry and vicious the media, and many of our commenters become, when Palin refuses to give them what they think they are owed.

She's a smart woman. She refuses to play the game with her tormenters. And she remains optimistic and determined to live her life for her own purposes.

I really don't care much about politics. But, I admire this woman. I wish her tormenters would shut up and find something else to do with their time.

Not necessarily a 'conspiracy theory'. Blasting music at Noriega's palace, contrary to press reports, was not done to make him crazy. It was done to make it impossible for the media to hear what was going on.

She came from Idaho and Alaska. I'm from a small western state myself. She thought the news media were in the business of news. A lot of us thought that, once, for a while. As Katy Couric's edit showed, they were in the business of character assassination and getting one of the right people elected.

On this topic Ms Palin has been a one-trial learner. Now the media would like access: she's a phenomenon, but more important, she's a ratings-plumper. They'd like the help. But the help's not coming; now they don't get access. It's hard to spin this as convincing evidence that of the two parties here, Palin and media, it is Palin that's dumb.

The CNN reporter looks rather pompous and rude. To me, he insults the people signing the books worse than Palin, by peremptorily interrupting her conversations as though he is trying to belittle Palin by suggesting that communication between a candidate and "ordinary" people should only be seen as a video opp to an appropriately sophisticated candidate.

I think Palin is the Republican candidate with the best chance of winning. Palin comes across as having a clean scrappy tendency to wrestle with her emotions rather than an elitist tendency to (say) go to the symphony to think about the importance of temperate thoughts whenever her thoughts might suggest craziness inside her. Rich clean elitists will tend to find her tendencies emotionally satisfying, and so when her policies disagree with what they think they need, they will give her more slack than they give Obama. Intellectually, they will be concerned about her relative indifference to her own craziness, but intellectually, provided they don't think she will go totally crazy (and I don't think they'll think she will on account of her presumably always having been emotionally like she is) my guess is what they will look at more is the issues. Those elitists who will be against her would tend to be somewhat nastier than typical and will underestimate her significantly, likely faring like those who feel polar bears are perfectly harmless creatures safe to pat. But wealthy elite types tend to be clean not-very-wild people, not much like what Hollywood portrays them to be (because Hollywood wants people to think rich people are mostly like them). I suppose she may have problems with hollywood and snl types, but she seems to be working on that. The academic elites will be against her presumably, but they'll be against any Republican, and they will tend to underestimate her more than other Republicans.

I am reminded of downtown Greenville, SC. Downtown was blighted because the rich people were afraid to shop there. But Greenville has right downtown one of the most impressive waterfalls on the East Coast, and after removing the kudzu surrounding it, etc., and placing a park and mathematically-elegant looking suspension pedestrian bridge next to it, somehow all the rich people suddenly felt comfy downtown and it has become the place for counties around for entertainment and shopping. And now downtown actually is (mostly) safe for individual rich people because they are in sufficient numbers not to stand out. As long as city officials don't get lulled into feeling the waterfall obviates the need for police presence, Greenville has it made. Palin could potentially be like this waterfall insofar as making rich people feel comfy about her and encouraging them to do the right thing.

Palin does not at all believe in freedom of the press and wants to control the media:

* By Palin Rules, Press were not permitted to speak to customers in line to get books signed.

* By Palin Rules, the media were constrained to one roped off area of the store! FREEDOM!

* "Unlike Palin's stop in Iowa the previous day, members of the media were required to arrive at Books-A-Million three hours before the event to have their camera equipment, computers and cell phones inspected by officers provided by the Richland County Sheriff's Department and Palin's own security detail."

* "Reporters were told that live feeds of the event were not allowed, and questions were not to be asked."

* "The press, including a Danish television crew, waited for three hours in Joe Muggs, the bookstore café, until a store representative selected a handful of journalists to come to the front of the store to observe Palin at a distance of ten feet for ten minutes, at which point they were rotated out."

News reporters should not be prevented from speaking to other Americans, to being cut off from the outside world, or to be physically restrained in a public store.

People on the left seem to need her, to bash her, because she is, in three words, the way the left likes to see the right: hollow, dim and mean. But since she’s feeding on the negativity, I suggest three other words: get over it.

Ummm...are you a total shut-in? How is it possible that you've lived your entire life and never once attended a book-signing, or even had one described to you?Palin's rules are virtually universal for all "celebrity" book signings, whether the author is a politician or not.

AlphaLib - I was just being snarky because I thought "goons" was over the top. I wasn't there and you weren't there, so neither of us know exactly who did what. Book signings by any major author are very controlled affairs regardless of politics. This is done to get the most number of book buyers through the line.

I will assume you too are just being snarky yourself when you say that I "hate the ideal of America….hate freedom for anyone but conservatives….care about power." You don't know me and if you did, you'd know those would be fighting words.

Freedom of the press does not mean the freedom to barge in and take over any social occasion. She grants many interviews, they can ask for one. The press as watchdog has in many cases become the press as attack dog and she has rightfully if belatedly learned to be wary.

Can anyone here believe that the Secret Service, or whoever, would allow anything like this around the President? And, yet, the press doesn't really complain when he holds up in the WH, doing Presidential things. Heck, they really don't hound any Democrat like they do her, regardless of their newsworthiness.

If the MSM had their way, they would be able to show up in the middle of the night wherever she was, knock on the door, and get an interview with her half asleep, just to play gotcha.

I have yet to see a criticism of Palin that has any real merit. She has lead as pure a life as any politician ever has... certainly there are no terrorists or Marxists listed amongst her close friends or mentors. There are no extremist views or rhetoric.

I must say that I find liberals trying to scrape together some coherent narrative of what is wrong with Palin immensely satisfying. Hysterical attacks like the one by Alpha Liberal (who has apparently never attended a book signing of any sort) really do bolster Palin's credibility with the general public and make it much more likely she will be elected. No one is going to fault her for favoring the public over the press at a book signing for God's sake.

About the only way in which the modern press is helpful is in pointing out who would make the best president. Whichever candidate they attack the most frequently is the man or woman for the job. One only has to have been alive during the Reagan years to understand the dynamic. Every single criticism made of Palin was made of Reagan. They really could just run the same articles with the name changed. They tried every trick in the book to paint him as dumb or dangerous when Carter was the epitome of both.

But here is the kicker. Palin is most hated because she is normal. She thinks like the typical American and has the same ideals as the Founders and as the people who make the country work. She doesn't do absurd things like worship at a race baiting church or advocate government intrusion into every realm of life. She has succeeded on merit rather than being promoted for her sex or the color of her skin. For this she can never be forgiven because she paints such a contrast to the paper mache messiah we currently have at the helm.

I can guarantee Alpha this much, Palin will not be two years into her presidency without having been asked any hard questions and she will have held more press conferences than the current fool on the hill. She is not the type to hide behind a spokesperson or a teleprompter.

Sarah Palin is not hollow, dim and mean. I am hollow, dim and mean and therefore I know that Sarah is not anything like that. The SaraCuda that I know is definitely substantial, bright and only seems mean to the professional liars she exposes.

"For the record, we did not turn off her music. We can assure you of that."

Kinda like when they assured us that they received no special treatment from Saddam Hussein's government for covering up his horrific treatment of his own people. They assured you of that. Before they admitted they had lied.

This is typical of the lying sacks of shit that comprise the mainstream media. They act like they are better than everyone. Certainly better than the person who waited in line to get a signed book and have a moment’s interaction with the person signing the book.

This asshole is lucky he didn't try to jump the line at an autograph show for baseball cards because he would have gotten a beat down that he would have remembered for a while.

I remember when I went to an autograph show with my little brother in the eighties in Atlantic City. This was right at the beginning of the hobby's resurgence and they had set up all of the 500 home run hitters at the time. They had Ted Williams and Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. And Joltin Joe DiMaggio. There were strict rules about what you could do. You couldn't talk to Joe or ask him a question or give him anything to sign other than officially approved memorabilia to sign. Some dude wanted him to sign a photo of him and Marilyn. The Trump Taj Mahal security dudes grabbed him and banged him against the wall a few times. Talk about your goons.

Anyway we had a boxing glove that we were having all the heavyweight champions’ sign. There was a separate line that I went on because I had no patience for the line for the 500 home runs because that had about a thousand people on it. There was no one on the line with the boxers. There was Floyd Patterson and Joe Frazier and Larry Holmes. Larry sounded just like hdhouse. All he would say is “I like eggs.” About every ten minutes or so randomly. I hung out with those guys for about an hour. What a great bunch of guys.

The moral of the tale is that when someone is signing books or autographs they are there for that reason and to interact with people who are paying money for the book. Not asshole scumbag douche nozzle cunt lapping reporters.

Later I sat at a black jack table with Pete Rose and Steve Carlton. Rose lost about fifty grand in an hour. This was when he was with the Phillies and shot over to AC every other day. Long before he got in trouble with gambling. Well long before he got caught that is.

I still don't think Sarah Palin has the experience to be an effective president, but boy, oh boy do I love the way she dishes back the disrespect that she gets from the left wing loonies. I love her because of who hates her.

I'm not sure how dictating what happens on private property in a privately owned store is somehow anti freedom of speech! Quite the opposite. CNN is a television station with all the free speech it needs, and if they are worried that they can't get Sarah Palin to answer a question that is their problem, not hers. Maybe they should be a bit nicer to her? I hear ratings are down.

so when is the proper time and place to ask queen sarah a question? she picks and choses her timesa and it is almost always either when she is slaughtering some wild animal for fun or over at FauxNoise with the wild animals that should be slaughter (figuratively of course!).

yea CNN could have picked a better time but I did think it interesting how, when the cameras appear, the people in line looked like deer in headlights trying to avoid being seen with her.